


your reward's in the sweet by and by

by reconditarmonia



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Bad Ending, F/F, Femslash February, Femslash February 2020, Lotus Eater Machine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:00:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22596688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reconditarmonia/pseuds/reconditarmonia
Summary: There's something she's supposed to remember.
Relationships: Deirdre/Billie Lurk | Meagan Foster, Delilah Copperspoon/Billie Lurk | Meagan Foster, Emily Kaldwin/Billie Lurk | Meagan Foster
Comments: 10
Kudos: 22
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	your reward's in the sweet by and by

**Author's Note:**

  * For [loveandthetruth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandthetruth/gifts).



> Title from the Decemberists' "The Tain." Happy Chocolate Box!

The stove is broken again. Billie grumbles, says they’re working her so hard down at the docks these days that she doesn’t know how long it’ll be until she can stop by Emma’s for the part at a time they’re actually open, and Deirdre kisses her forehead. “We’ll go without,” she says. “We’ve made do with a lot worse.”

It’s true: they’ve eaten rats and rotten tinned meat, without even a roof to sleep under, or a soft warm bed with two quilts like they have now. “We’ll never have to again,” says Billie fiercely, and kisses Deirdre’s lips. “I’ll get the part today. And some tomatoes, while I’m out, so that you can cook that stew you like tonight.” Deirdre works as a servant now, and both of them rise early and return late, but Billie generally wakes Deirdre up with breakfast, and most of the time Deirdre has dinner on the table waiting for Billie at night. Their apartment is small, but clean and white and snug, with no cracks to let the draught in, and Deirdre grows herbs in a window box. Billie’s looking forward to the apartment filling with the scent of Deirdre’s stew.

Billie manages to get Matthews to cover for her for three-quarters of an hour in exchange for working the same amount of his shift tomorrow, and goes over to Emma’s, her eyes adjusting to the dim light as she breathes in the now-familiar smell of the hardware store. They know she’s not someone they can screw over, and she gets the right part for a good price before heading back to the dockyard. There’s something she’s supposed to remember, tickling at the edge of her mind, but it’ll come back later. 

She chases down the taste of the stew that night with the taste of Deirdre, licking the sweat from her throat and the upper inside of her thigh, lapping at her cunt where Billie’s made her wet. They never had enough time before, among the fumbling moments stolen in alleys and behind dumpsters, for Billie to lay Deirdre down on her back and tease her until she screamed, to see her wholly naked in the warm glow of a lamp by the bed.

The harbor’s even more crowded the next morning, and Billie thinks of those bygone days when she was only responsible for one ship, but it was hers. She can’t deny that some mornings, when the wind comes in from the south and smells like clean salt instead of bilgewater, she misses being able to go anywhere; to have the option, always, of becoming someone else again. But now she has Deirdre, and she doesn’t even remember what it was like to sell off the _Dreadful Wale_ at all. She’s put down roots — in Dunwall, of all places, the city circling back to draw her in after all these years. 

“If the Empress could see me now,” she says, laughing, to Matthews, as they haul on a rope together. Emily would probably laugh, too. _Not so jaded after all, are you, Meagan?_

“The Empress?” he asks.

“I had her as a passenger on my ship for a few months. She slept in one of the cabins, helped me fix things. Even took her turn in the galley.” Sometimes Billie misses the sound of Emily talking or clattering around her ship; misses smoking with her, climbing up to the bridge and finding her looking out over the water. Remembers the relief she felt whenever she saw Emily’s silhouette up on a rock or at the end of a tunnel, returning safe to the skiff. She’d like to see Emily again, Billie thinks. Maybe she can write her a letter, and Emily can find a few hours to share a bottle of whiskey with her, like old times.

Matthews shakes his head. “I don’t believe it. Empress Delilah, working like a mechanic?”

Billie’s insides turn to cold iron. “No — Emily Kaldwin — Jessamine’s daughter, Emily —”

“Who?”

Billie realizes for the first time that the statue of the Empress that she passes on her way to work has been covered in scaffolding for as long as she can remember, and she’s only ever remarked the graffiti on it; that the tune Deirdre hums while she cleans sounds familiar because she heard it in Brigmore Manor, and the only time she's heard it within the city walls was as she passed through the abandoned streets towards Dunwall Tower, on her way to kill Delilah. That Deirdre’s never actually told her how she survived the Duke’s son’s attack.

The scaffolding folds and crumples easily enough when she sets a match to it, wood and cloth crackling red-hot and collapsing from the pedestal down to the ground, and Delilah’s face looks back at her, sculpted in cold white marble.

The statue steps down, movements jerky, then more fluid, as the dark flows back into Delilah’s hair and her eyes and her suit. “I wanted you to be happy, Billie, my dear,” says Delilah, reaching out to stroke Billie’s cheek. “I’ve never hated you.”

Billie takes her knife and thrusts it through Delilah’s heart, and Delilah lets out a wet, shuddering gasp of pain as she twists the blade. The last time they met face to face, when Delilah was the age she still looks, Delilah vowed to tear out Billie’s heart if she saw her again. And, fool that she is, Billie went and made herself Delilah’s enemy twice over.

“Oh, there were words between us — don’t think I don’t know what you whispered to yourself, on that ship bound away from Dunwall,” says Delilah, from behind her. The other body dissolves into ash as it hits the ground. Billie hits the new one until it stops moving. Delilah’s strong, but doesn’t bother to fight back, taking each blow as if it were a caress and laughing when Billie cracks her skull against the ground. 

“You’ll remember how you used to love me.” While Billie wasn’t looking, another Delilah has perched on the pedestal. “All those years in the Void, I never forgot your heart’s desire. I’d walked in your dreams!” Billie’s sight grows cloudy, and for a moment she thinks this is another one of Delilah’s enchantments. Then she realizes she’s crying: weeping as though Deirdre has died again, as though she’d come home to Deirdre bleeding on the floor, eyes unseeing, the way Billie last saw her for real twenty-five years ago. Her hands and forearms are still spattered with the blood of Delilah’s vanished doubles. “You must know, I can’t have you threatening the world I’ve made. This one is my gift to you.”

Billie’s voice is thick as she asks, “What happened to Emily?”

For the first time, Delilah’s face contracts in anger. “I killed the false Empress with my own hand, and ground the charcoal of her bones into her blood. Never think of her again.”

Billie stabs her again, over and over, knowing it won’t matter. The body fades, and the dust of its fading sticks to the blood and the tears on her face. This time Delilah doesn’t come again, leaving her alone.


End file.
